AI-Generated Empathy: Opportunities, limits, and future directions

Greater numbers of people are turning to Artificial Intelligence for empathy and emotional support. Here, we review and synthesize recent empirical work on how people perceive empathy from AI versus from humans. Growing evidence points to two dueling effects, and a paradox: AI produces language that is rated as higher in empathy than language written by humans; but when people perceive text as coming from an AI versus a human, they rate it as less empathic. But despite sometimes rating AI as more empathic or having to wait for human empathy, people still show a preference for human empathy. This emerging literature carries significant implications for fundamental research on empathy, and for public discourse as the use of AI for emotional support may continue to grow.